Michelle Malkin is no stranger to hate mail from unhinged liberals. Today, she shares a rather amusing tale. Seems she received the following email correspondence,
Michelle Malkin,
I bet we could make your cry for real. Force you to eat a hamburger.
I often wonder what will happen when we progressive liberal adults take back our country.
The adults will stop wars for oil,
Everyone will have health care.
Everyone will have a roof over their heads.
Everyone will have a voice in our government.
Everyone will pay equal taxes.The Republican Party will be a quaint memory to tell our children about.
The best part is someday you will die of anorexia or choke to death on your own purging. That’s my dream.
Thank you,
Joe Roppe
Stevens Point, WI
Pretty standard boilerplate when it comes to Malkin hate mail. That is, until Michelle decided to look this Joe Roppe character up. Turns out, Joe Roppe wrote a letter to the editor of his local paper ten days ago. Care to guess the topic?
Cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying is a tactic some people use to anonymously attack those they disagree with using the Internet through email or on message boards. It can include threats on a person’s life, sexual remarks, pejorative labels such as hate speech all of which are intended to harm others.
Since the Internet gives people a semblance of anonymity, they can act more aggressively than they would face-to-face. You should not reply to threatening emails or negative postings on a website. Even if you do, this is not justification for an unstable person to fly into a rage and step over the line.
Congratulations Joe Roppe, the pride of Stevens Point, WI, you are now a member of the Moonbat Hypocrite Hall of Fame.
When it comes to kids, cars and drinking, some kids get the message, some don’t,
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Jane Hambleton has dubbed herself the “meanest mom on the planet.”
After finding alcohol in her son’s car, she decided to sell the car and share her 19-year-old’s misdeed with everyone — by placing an ad in the local newspaper.
The ad reads: “OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents who obviously don’t love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet.”
…”It’s overwhelming the number of calls I’ve gotten from people saying ‘Thank you, it’s nice to see a responsible parent.’ So far there are no calls from anyone saying, ‘You’re really strict. You’re real overboard, lady.”‘
The only critic is her son, who Hambleton says is “very, very unhappy” with the ad and claims the alcohol was left by a passenger.
Hambleton believes her son but has decided mercy isn’t the best policy in this case. She says she set two rules when she bought the car at Thanksgiving: No booze, and always keep it locked.
Good for her. You go mom!
Michael Yon left for another long embed in Iraq yesterday. He should be there are reporting once again from the front lines in a few days. I wish him well and pray for his safety.
Michael has a couple of great posts up on his blog right now, one is the latest in a series titled Men of Valor, check it out. In the other post of note, he let’s his readers know that he has a book coming out titled Moment of Truth in Iraq,
Readers genuinely interested in a fuller more comprehensive picture of the so-called “surge†unfolding, and continuing to unfold, might be interested to know that I have arranged to publish a book based on my 2007 dispatches, with much of the missing details and behind-the-scenes information added and including material I will be writing about critical events in early 2008 that will give deeper credence to the title of the new book, Moment of Truth in Iraq.
My book Moment of Truth in Iraq, due out in April 2008, will be packed with battlefield coverage, including some never-before-published material. But it will also include more from behind the scenes, as I traveled and up and down the back country to systematically report on the astounding campaign of 2007 to snatch Iraq back from the abyss.
Michael does not receive funding or financial support from any network, movie, book or television deals. He is entirely reader-supported. He relies on his readers to help him replace his equipment and cover his expenses so that he may remain in Iraq and bring you the stories of our soldiers. If you value his work, please consider supporting his mission.
Over at Blue Mass Group,
A Huge Step Backward on Global Warming in Massachusetts
No word on whether Rhode Island is safe, but we are screwed.
When Drudge broke out the siren this afternoon to say that NH was having record turnout and even running out of ballots, the conventional wisdom said that is bad news for Hillary Clinton. The turnout meant that Obama was bringing out new voters, inspired by his change rhetoric.
I bought it. I thought Hillary would get smoked tonight. Instead, she’ll be crying tears of joy. I still think Obama wins the nomination, but it won’t be a steam roll. Biggest mystery left tonight is how annoying Bill is going to be.
Fox News just called it for McCain on the Republican side. Not surprising given recent polls, but in the big picture, wow. This was not even a remote possibility a few months ago.
Overall, good news for political junkies, everybody’s still in it and competitive.
UPDATE: The world’s greatest live blogger, Vodkapundit,
I’m telling you, you’ve got to run a steak through the heart, separate the head from the body, burn the remains and scatter the ashes in heavy winds if you want to put a Clinton down for good.
He, like me, saw things differently this afternoon.
UPDATE 2: Juan Williams on Fox just credited the strong Democratic Party machine in NH for Hillary’s performace. The “organization”. Having worked for some of them, I can tell you that is true.
UPDATE 3: Huckabee is a likeabe person, if you can get past the sanctimony. Not my cup of tea. I’d vote for Obama over him.
UPDATE 4: Ouch, on Fox, Romney’s chief spokesman was cut off mid-sentence for McCain’s acceptance speech.
UPDATE 5: McCain’s reading his acceptance speech and it doesn’t come across well, especially in the wake of Huck and Mitt’s performances. This harkens the age issue. Now he seems like he’s getting angry with the crowd for interrupting him with applause lines.
UPDATE 6: Here’s Andrew Sullivan’s take,
“There’s one other possible explanation for the apparent Clinton revival in the last few days. Maybe Democrats decided that a sudden blowout for Obama wasn’t good for their party. Maybe they wanted to see Obama fight some more, to keep the contest more competitive, to give their candidates more testing for the fall. Maybe they just wanted to say: “Wait. A tidal wave is no way to select a candidate. We need to see both of them fight on under the kind of pressure they will face in the fall.”
UPDATE 7: Uh, Kos agrees with me on McCain’s speech,
Here’s a thread to talk about how horrible McCain’s speech was. Jesus, is it possible to have less energy than that? It might not be “Dean Scream”-esque, but it was bad.
Late last week, the Supreme Court decided to hear a case on the constitutionality of the death penalty for the crime of rape of a child.
Justices to Decide if Rape of a Child Merits Death
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether the Constitution allows the death penalty for the rape of a child.
The justices acted only three days before a scheduled argument in another important death penalty case, on the standard for judging whether chemicals used to administer lethal injections make that method of execution unconstitutionally cruel.
The new case, from Louisiana, is likely to be argued in April, meaning that during the course of its current term, the Supreme Court will be examining both the most common method of execution and a categorical question about which crimes are appropriate for the death penalty.
No one has been executed in the United States for a crime other than murder since 1964.
While I’m not a lawyer, I do have relevant experience to comment on this issue. Let me explain.
As a boy, I had a baseball coach with whom my father didn’t get along. I never knew why at the time, but he had suspicions about the guy and kept a close eye on him. No overnight trips for me. Twenty years later, news broke that this particular coach was being accused of sexually abusing players and it all made sense to me. This particular pedophile didn’t wait for the courts to decide what to do, he killed himself. At the same time I was an alter boy at a parish that had a priest on the list of sexual abusers that came to light in the wake of the Cardinal Law sex abuse debacle. Little did I know, but I spent my youth surrounded by pedophiles. Thankfully, because of involved and active parents, I never had any idea until 20 years later.
More recently, I spent several long months on a grand jury, two days per week, all day. We heard ten, fifteen cases per day. They ranged from robbing a 7-11 to first degree murder. Not a day went by when we were not confronted with cases involving either child porn or child rape.
It is everywhere, the victimization and sexual abuse of children. The victims came from every demographic and economic circumstance, from the tony little towns to the rough and tumble cities. It is an epidemic worse then the drug problem in my opinion because the victims are so helpless.
So, what should be done to these predators? What does our society owe these children? What should our laws communicate to the rest of society about our values and how much we cherish the innocence of our kids?
The crime of child sexual abuse preys on the innocent and defenseless. Is it too much to say to the worst offenders, you have forfeited your right to live? I say no, it is not.
Patterico, a district attorney by day, warns that harsh punishment can have unintended consequences,
I’m not sure it’s the wisest idea. I’ve seen firsthand cases where draconian laws have caused criminals to kill people, where they would not have otherwise. If you know that you face death for raping a child, what’s the incentive to leave the child alive?
It seems to me that the most offensive crimes to society deserve the harshest penalties. I can’t think of a more offensive crime than this one.